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FIND OF A LIFETIME
My wife and I awoke early Saturday morning and glanced out the picture
window to notice the trees blowing about. We then checked the
thermometer we had outside and decided that to go relic hunting as we
had planned the night before, we would have to wear winter clothes. In
Iowa, winter does not loose its grip until at least the first of May
and this was just past the middle of April.
We had breakfast, found our ruk sacks and relic sticks, loaded them in
our trusty Mustang and off we went. Being a surveyor, I had many
opportunities to tramp the Iowa countryside and determine where the
plowing was and if it looked like good relic country. I had picked a
site overlooking one of Iowa's major rivers and it had been fall plowed
so I figured it wasn't going to get much better.
As we headed West from our home in Bettendorf, we happened to pass a
field with a fairly large herd of buffalo and my wife had never seen a
real buffalo so we casually pulled off the road and took video footage
of the animals up near the fence. We then continued Westward to a small
town not far from the river where we decided it was time for a cup of
coffee already. One thing I have learned over the years: there are
relic hunters and then there are tag-alongs with relic hunters. I won't
elaborate any more.
After what seemed forever to me, we arrived at the site I had picked.
We stopped and asked the owner for permission which was quickly given
and we drove a short distance to the field. My excitement was running
quite high as I looked toward the river bluff and noticed at least ten
burial mounds in the area. I quickly video'd them also to go with the
buffalo just in case the Lord had nothing in store for us. We climbed
the fence and immediately began to look in the rich, black Iowa soil.
My wife again marveled as she is from here in the mountains of North
Carolina and had never set foot in that type of rich soil before.
We hunted for about an hour and my wife found a couple of knives and a
broken arrow and I had found nothing, not even a flake. She was about
fifteen feet behind me and about ten feet to my right as we looked
toward the river bluff. Then, as I noticed a white piece of flint
sticking up out of the black soil immediately behind a root ball from a
corn plant, I yelled to my wife to come quickly. I got the camera off
my shoulder as she approached and asked what the commotion was about. I
, by this time, was almost speechless as I gazed at the piece of flint.
I could only point as I bent down and began to film the piece. I
reached down and pulled the piece gently upward from behind the corn
root ball ever so slowly and I managed to tell my wife that it was
probably broken anyhow. Her remark back to me was that I had gotten in
her "row" and really it belonged to her. I finally cleared the corn
root ball and my stomach flipped with excitement. It was the nicest
complete Agate Basin point I had ever seen! As I rubbed the dirt off
and turned it over, I realized that it was paper thin. I held it up to
the sun and it was glowing in my hand! All of a sudden, the cold April
wind didn't matter any more!
As I handed it to my wife for examination, I told her-this truly was a
FIND OF A LIFETIME. The Lord surely had been good to us that spring of
1993.
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